Nigel Farage posted a picture of himself having dinner with Donald Trump.
Photograph: @Nigel_Farage

Nigel Farage dined out with Donald Trump on Saturday night after managing to secure a last-minute invitation to join the US president for an evening meal.

The former Ukip leader was photographed sitting opposite Trump and alongside his daughter Ivanka, her husband and senior White House adviser, Jared Kushner, and the Florida governor, Rick Scott, at the president’s luxury hotel in Washington DC.

Posting the photograph on Twitter, Farage wrote “Dinner with The Donald”. However, onlookers revealed that a place had only been made for him at the table at short notice.

No 10 was quick to play down the significance of the Trump meeting and subsequent dinner at the Trump International Hotel in Washington DC, saying that they did not believe the US president would be misled into thinking he was being briefed by Farage on official government policy.

“We have an excellent ambassador who has and does meet the administration, including President Trump,” a spokesman said. “We have formal, well-established processes for communicating with the US administration and those are the ones we use. They know we communicate through the existing channels, I’m 100% certain they are aware of that.”

Journalist Benny Johnson, who said the secret service “swarmed the place” before Trump’s arrival, had been keeping tabs on the group at the Trump International hotel.

Johnson, the creative director of online news outlet Independent Journal Review, wrote on Twitter: “Farage was not invited to this dinner. Squeezed in at last minute.”

In a blog detailing all the events of the evening, the journalist said restaurant staff were given word just before Trump arrived that an extra place needed to be added to the table. Farage was seen greeting Trump in the lobby, who pointed up to his table and appeared to invite him for dinner.

Farage was later “found wandering the lobby of the hotel with a large glass of red wine”. Johnson said: “His teeth are wine-stained, and the British politician is happily swaying and speaking with anyone who approaches him.”

When he asked what it was like to have the president invite you to dinner, he writes that Farage told him: “Well it’s really quite wonderful. But as I’ve gotten to know Donald, it really just does not surprise me. You know what amazes me about your president? He is a regular bloke. Truly. Just a normal chap. Upstairs at dinner, he spoke to the table like any regular guy out to dine with friends and family. There is no pretension at all.”

Johnson pressed Farage for further details on what the president spoke about while eating but he “just laughed and said it was nothing that interesting, with a smirk and a wink.”

Earlier in the day, Farage had backed Trump’s treatment of the mainstream media, heaping praise on his political ally in a television interview. He told Fox News: “They [the media] are simply not prepared to accept that Brexit happened, that Trump happened, they kind of want to turn the clock back. And what they don’t realise is they are losing viewers, they are losing listeners, they are losing this battle big time and I’m pleased the president is not afraid to stand up to them.”

He added: “And it’s not going to stop, it’s one that is going to roll out across the rest of the great world.”

Farage said he was proud to have supported Trump in the election and attacked US mainstream media for being “in deep denial” about Trump’s victory, but said Americans as a whole would grow to appreciate their new leader. “Just as Brexit becomes more popular by the day, President Trump will become more popular in America by the day,” he said.

The party’s deputy leader, Peter Whittle, admitted it may have been a mistake for the leader, Paul Nuttall, to run for the party in Stoke-on-Trent Central so early in his leadership. Speaking on BBC1’s Andrew Marr Show, the London assembly member said “If there was one mistake we made, it was that maybe Paul shouldn’t have run so early. He’s only been leader for 12 weeks. People hadn’t got to know him well enough, I think. We didn’t win this time – there are many by-elections coming up.”

Nuttall, who Whittle said could not appear on the show as he had a holiday booked immediately after the election result, came second in Stoke, barely increasing the party’s share of the vote despite Ukip’s pledge to seize power from Labour.

Whittle dismissed threats from Arron Banks, Ukip’s main donor, to set up another party unless he was made chairman, saying there were other people who would provide money.

Banks has threatened to pull his funding unless he is made chairman so he can “purge” members and stop the party being “run like a jumble sale”. Asked if he did not want Banks as Ukip chairman, Whittle replied: “It would be a very interesting conversation to have. I’ve always been very, very grateful for Arron’s contributions.

“If Arron does take his money away, there are other people. Obviously I wouldn’t want that to happen. These sort of interventions are run-of-the-mill, they happen all the time within our party. It’s part of politics.

“I think the difference is, with us, people tend to see a kind of do-or-die situation in virtually every controversy.”